


Voluntary Madness

by ArtemisRae



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gen, Prompt Fic, The Gangs All Here, and his friends, but he still loves annabeth, come on guys, dont even ask, he guesses, it was supposed to be a relaxing evening out catching up with friends, its been a long weekend, percy does not have time for this crap, this is basically just drunk shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-24 00:50:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12001473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtemisRae/pseuds/ArtemisRae
Summary: Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness. (Seneca the Younger)Or - Percy and Jason attempt to escort the girls home after a casual night out takes a turn for the drunk.





	Voluntary Madness

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt fic! Prompt was - too drunk after a night out.

At eleven Percy and Jason left the sports bar where they’d been catching up, half-watching football games at the bar top, and went back to where they’d left the girls.

That was the first inkling that the night had gone off track.

The band that had been playing was still going - some group with a ridiculously long hipster name that would never fit on a t shirt - but Annabeth, Piper, and Rachel were definitely missing from the table they’d been sitting at when Jason and Percy had decided that the acoustic music was still too loud to talk to one another and vacated with promises to meet right there again in a couple hours.

The leather envelope with their tab was still on the table, along with the last round of glasses. Percy picked it up like it might hold a clue, but found something much less helpful instead.

“They’ve done shots,” he informed Jason, who rolled his eyes. Shots could mean anything. Annabeth with shots in her could go from laughing to crying in thirty seconds after petting a dog. Piper got handsy with everyone and made friends in the bathrooms and would refuse to come out. And Rachel -

The thing about Rachel was that she held her booze better than everyone in their little group of friends until a certain line was crossed. The problem was that no one was sure where that line was, least of all Rachel herself. Which meant that one moment she was fine, and the next she suddenly turned into the trainwreck heiress that the tabloids were all begging for.  

This was supposed to be a casual night out with a couple drinks. But now the evening had clearly taken a turn and Percy had been less nervous to tell Actual Gods to fuck off. They each texted the group chat -  _where are you?!_  - and neither one was pleased to find that the girls had moved onto the club next door.

The one with the huge line to get in. **  
**

The one with the horrendous cover charge.

The one with the music so loud that Percy could hear it across the street.

They had enough money for the cover but not to bribe the doorman into letting them skip the line, no matter that they only wanted to retrieve the girls and leave. With a growl they got into the back of the line and started spamming the group text.

_We’re outside and can’t get in, come out here._

_We just got a fresh round, you come in instead! **  
**_

_We can’t!!! Come out so we can call for Uber!!!_

_This is the last roundpromise!_

Percy growled and resisted the urge to throw his phone. Jason had a similarly sour look on his face. **  
**

They lasted all of five minutes before both their phones vibrated. It was Rachel, and the tone of her text was not nearly apologetic enough:

_Piper broke a glass and they gave her a new one_

This was received simultaneously with a message from Annabeth:

_That guy deserved it._

Jason and Percy made eye contact and tried to piece together the story. **  
**

_What guy???_

_That guy Piper tried to get kikced out bc hes an ass_

“I’m going to strangle her,” Percy muttered. **  
**

“Which one?” Jason countered.

“Either. Both.”

Their phones lit up, and they looked down again. Piper this time:

_MY SHOES ARE BROKEN_

“I hope they’re together,” Jason muttered. “I’m not up for a quest to collect all of them.”

Then:  _JASON DID YOU HEAR ME MY SHOES ARE BROKEN_

“Oh she was talking to me then.” He sighed and tapped out a response. **  
**

_Leave the club. Come outside, meet me and we will go home and I will fix your shoes._

_YOU CANT THEYRE VERY BROKEN_

Jason sighed and looked to the heavens, clearly calling upon a high power to grant him patience. Before either of them could formulate a response, Rachel rejoined the conversation: **  
**

_We’re trying to leave but nico got mad at us and now we can’t find him and we don’t want to leave him._

_When did Nico get here??_

_Hazel brought him!_

_WHEN DID HAZEL GET HERE???_

Percy roared this out loud as he tapped into the phone. Hazel at that point seemed to realize her phone had been going off and joined the conversation:

_I lov Bruno Mars!!!!!!!!_

Sure enough, the strains of “That’s What I Like” were ringing in their ears; worse still, it was obvious that the crowd was chanting along. Percy hated clubs.

At that point, their phones blew up:

_We are leaving._

_Give me Bruno!!!!!!!_

_DO YOU HAVE AMBROSIA_

_Who needs ambrosia?_

_WHO NEED  SAMBROSIA_

_Imfine!_

_Who needs ambrosia??_

Jason fumbled in his pocket before bringing his phone close to his glasses:

_I have ambrosia but you need to leave so we can give it to you._

At the same time Percy, at the absolute limit of his patience, sent:

_I am calling for uber RIGHT NOW so anyone who wants to go home with me needs to leave RIGHT NOW_

Then to cap it off, he sent a screenshot from his phone, showing that Stephen was picking him up in a white Honda Civic in approximately seven minutes. **  
**

It took three for the bedraggled group to appear in the entrance of the club, and Percy thought that he’d seen them coming out of Capture the Flag in better shape. Piper was limping - not out of pain, but because she was only wearing one shoe. She shoved the shoe into Jason’s hands, who, to his credit, actually did look at it before declaring, “I can’t fix this.”

Piper’s face was wounded. “You said you could!”

“The heel is plastic Pipes! It’s broken in half!”

“ _Glue_  it!” she cried, throwing her hands up and flinging her head back dramatically. “Leo would glue it!”

“Leo would solder it.” Annabeth said helpfully. **  
**

“That’s not how soldering work,” Jason replied, only to be overridden by Percy:

“What happened to your arm?!” He caught Annabeth by the wrist and lifted her arm; tucked on the underside near her ribs an ugly black and purple mark was blooming. It definitely hadn’t been there when they’d left the apartment that evening, he was positive. “Jason, give me your ambrosia.”

Annabeth waved him off. “I missed the step, it’s fine, there was a railing.”

Rachel appeared and took Piper’s shoe, examining it. “Jason is right, you can’t solder this.”

“Why not!”

“It’s plastic!” Jason interjected, but Rachel held up the shoe and pointed to the heel.

“You left the broken half in the club!”

Percy’s phone beeped; the Uber was apparently waiting. He stepped to the curb to look for the white car only to watch in amazement as a sleek black sedan pulled up; Percy could see the Mist was distracting mortals, but it was clearly of godly origin, judging by the way it navigated through gaps in traffic that a bicycle couldn’t fit through, let alone a car.

“That’s our ride!” Hazel exclaimed, sweeping Annabeth and Piper into a hug and pushing Nico towards the street. “Bye guys, let’s do this again soon!”

Percy and Jason gaped.

“He didn’t even say hi to me.” Jason griped.

“She didn’t even say bye to me!” Percy responded, pouting involuntarily.

His phone started ringing then; it was Stephen, asking where they were. Which was alarming because Annabeth had stepped into the street and was attempting to crawl into a blue Ford Escape  that was clearly not a white Honda Civic.

“Annabeth stop!” he shouted, the phone at his ear. She fell backwards, and came within inches of getting run over by a car that was pulling away from the curb.

“It has the Lyft light!” she protested.

“We’re taking  _Uber_!” he shouted back.

“Uber is like four times surge pricing right now!” she argued, trying to wrestle his phone off of him.

“The Uber is  _waiting_!” As they tussled they could hear a confused voice going  _uhhh hello?_ and despite Annabeth’s strength he was still taller than her; he wrenched the phone from her grasp and held it above her head. “We are right outside the entrance to Dive please do not leave us I will meet you wherever you want.”

“He’s right there man,” Jason pointed, and together they herded the girls to the car. Percy hadn’t thought to request an XL, which meant that Rachel gave the driver a fifty and Annabeth got to sit on his lap. **  
**

“We actually have two stops,” Rachel told Stephen, and Percy let out an agonized, protesting noise. Would this night never end?

Jason who had somehow ended up in the middle backseat, was determinedly ignoring Piper as she kissed his neck. “You can’t want to go to another bar.”

“No, we’re going to Jacob’s Sandwich Shoppe, I ordered us all sandwiches.”

Despite the fact that it added twenty minutes to the trip, and he’d eaten both dinner and wings at the sports bar with Jason, Percy decided he deserved a sandwich. More than that, he deserved one of Jacob’s gourmet sandwiches, which were stupidly delicious and also stupidly expensive. He only ever ate them if Rachel paid, and hadn’t considered they could be late night drunk food until now. One of them had foie gras, for the love of Zeus.

The driver consented to wait while Rachel ran into the restaurant to grab the food; for about thirty seconds there was quiet and then Annabeth fumbled behind her, looking for the door handle.

“Are you okay?” Percy asked, leaning away to get a good look at her.

“I need fresh air.” Her response was calm, but there was a certain panic to her movements, and Percy knew what was coming next. He prevented her from falling backwards onto her rear end, and she rolled away from him, legs unfolding unsteadily so she could stagger to a potted tree in the doorway of Jacob’s and heaved.

“Fresh air, huh?” he muttered, but Annabeth heard him and croaked out a  _shut up_  in between retches.

An old woman approached them, shambling by with a hood covering most of her face. She stopped, sniffed, and started to lower her hood, her long, stringy black hair falling out. “Are those demigods I smell?” **  
**

Percy didn’t even draw his sword. He shoved his hand in the old lady’s face. “Now is not the time.”

His dismissal seemed to successfully confuse her, because she moved along and Percy returned his attention to his sick girlfriend. By the time Annabeth was finished Rachel had returned to the car and was already halfway through her sandwich. Whatever Rachel had bought them, the car was filled with warring scents, including those of foie gras, onions, and curry, and Percy eyed Annabeth the entire trip back to Rachel’s apartment.

Somehow she made it without throwing up again, though the second Rachel let them through the door she stumbled into the bathroom, where they heard they heard the shower start.

Percy stared at the closed bathroom door. “I hope she remembered to take her clothes off this time.”

“I hope she remembers to put clothes back on this time.” Rachel handed him a sandwich, which he was delighted to find that it was lobster roll with truffle oil fries on top. The shower ran while he worked his way through the sandwich, shutting off just as he was balling up the greasy paper and tossing it in the trash.

Piper was snoring on Rachel’s shoulder, both of them kicked back in Rachel’s lounger. Rachel was still awake, watching them blearily. The remaining couple bites of her sandwich were still sitting on her chest.

He picked up the remaining sandwich and knocked gently on the bathroom door. “Annabeth?”

The door opened, and an arm appeared amidst the massive cloud of steam that escaped the room. She flailed, and Percy put the sandwich in her hand.

The door shut in his face again.

“So!” Rachel sounded much more chipper than her squinted eyes looked. “Brunch tomorrow? I know a place with a bloody mary bar.”


End file.
